Blood Count

CHAPTER 6

He’s here. Good,” the guy in the doorway said to Lily. He meant me. “You must be Artie, good to meet you. I’m Virgil Radcliff,” he added in a soft-spoken, easy way as he shook my hand. He was tall, rangy, and loose like an athlete, same kind of haircut as Obama, though he was darker.

Was skin color the first thing you noticed in Harlem? Was it always that way? Or was it me?

The guy was good looking. And young. In his hand was an iPhone, and he kept looking at it. It rang. He turned it off, then put it back on, examined it for messages.

“Sorry, I’ve got a lot going on,” he said.

“Virgil’s a detective,” said Lily. “Like you.”

“What do they call you,” I said, “Mr. Tibbs?”

“What?” He looked puzzled.

“Forget it.” He had no idea it was a crappy joke. I was hoping Lily, who seemed preoccupied, hadn’t noticed.

“I saw you lecture once at John Jay, Artie, when I did my masters there. You were talking about radioactive material, that case of yours, the little suitcase nukes. It was really interesting,” said Radcliff. “Are you OK, Lily? I’m sorry I took so long getting back.”

“Artie wants me to call Marianna’s doctor. I was just going to get the number. I have it at my place.” She started out to the hall. I followed her. I closed the door behind me, leaving Radcliff in Simonova’s apartment.

“Who’s he?”

“He’s a friend.”

“I got that.”

“He’s a detective, I told you. He knows about Marianna.” She looked nervously down the hallway, the strip of dark red carpet over the tiled floors, the walls papered in silver stripes. Somewhere a dog yapped. From outside came the siren of an ambulance.

“So what did you need me for? You don’t trust him?”

“Of course, I trust him. It’s just different.”

“He was with you when you found her?”

“Sort of.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Virgil was in the building. I found her first, then I got him to come in to look at her.”

“He was in this building at six this morning? Where exactly?”

“Don’t do this, not right now,” she said. “I found her, I was so upset I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t really even talk. Virgil said maybe I should call you. He said, ‘Maybe Artie Cohen can help,’ and I thought, right, Artie will understand.”

“How does he know about me? Other than that lecture he mentioned?”

“He said somebody where he works was talking about you recently. Look, I need to get the doctor’s number and I need to put on some clothes, OK? Can you just go back and wait with Virgil for me? He’s a good guy, Artie.”

“So he heard about me from somebody at his precinct?”

“Yeah, there’s that. Also,” she said, “I talk about you.”

When I got back inside Marianna Simonova’s apartment, I saw Radcliff leaning against the mantelpiece, using his iPhone, waiting. He looked familiar.

Where had I seen him before? Then I remembered: election night. They had been dancing together. Him and Lily.

He wasn’t more than thirty-seven, thirty-eight. I felt old. I felt jealous.

“You OK?” He looked up from his phone. “It’s good you’re here, Artie. Lily needs you.”

“Why’s that? She has you. One detective’s not enough?”

He let it roll off him, just looked at the dead woman on the sofa and back at me.

I went and leaned against the mantel alongside Radcliff. He wore a thick black sweater, a heavy leather jacket, jeans, Timberland boots.

“Lily seems pretty upset.” I toned down the sarcasm. I didn’t like the sound of myself going for him.

“You’re right, Artie. I don’t get it. You’ve known her a long time; I thought you could help.” He got a pack of smokes out of his pocket and offered them to me.

“I quit, but what the hell.” I took one, lit it with some matches I had in my pocket, handed them to Radcliff, and gestured at the dead woman. “You knew her?”

“I didn’t like her, Artie, since you’re asking. She was damn demanding, she was imperious, she used Lily, if you ask me, and the more Lily did for her, the more she wanted. I think she played on some kind of guilt Lily has.”

“What else?”

“Everybody in this building paid court to Simonova. It was like she had something on them.”

“You were surprised when she died?”

He shrugged.

“It was pretty sudden.”

“Yeah,” said Radcliff.

“But you didn’t call the ME? You didn’t feel like doing that?”

“I didn’t see a reason to call. The old woman was sick, she died. You have a problem with that?”

“Better to do it by the book, if it turns out there was a problem. Better for Lily.”

“What for? She was sick, she died.”

“There’s no reason not to call,” I said. “Is there?” I got out my phone.

“Since you’re asking, Artie, I’m just telling you we shouldn’t call. Trust me. It’s a bad idea.” He put his hand out as if to take my phone away, then withdrew it. “Listen to me, Artie, there’s no damn reason to call. This wasn’t violent, it wasn’t a crime, or suicide; this woman was sick, and she’s been seen by doctors. No need at all for the ME to determine cause of death. OK? You with me?”

“You been reading up on this, or you just remember it all from the academy?”

“Sure, if you want,” he said.

“How come you’re so fucking sure there was no cause? And I wasn’t asking your permission about the ME. I’m just fucking doing it.”

“I’m saying it’s a bad idea, Artie. We can get Dr. Hutchison from next door to sign the death certificate. Let Lily be done with it.”

I punched some numbers into my phone.

“Don’t do that,” said Radcliff.

“Fuck you.”

“You call it in, you make it a case,” he said. “They take the body, seal the apartment, if there’s a will, it goes into probate, the thing goes on and on. You know that, Artie, you’ve been there. Lily’s pretty fragile about this right now.”

Radcliff had an annoying way of saying my name every few sentences: Maybe he figured it for good manners, or to reassure me he was paying attention. I didn’t like his reluctance to deal with the death the right way. Something was wrong.

“You want to open a window on this for me, like they say? Just tell me what’s going on,” I said.

Radcliff’s iPhone rang again. He took the call, walking across the room, speaking softly. He seemed somehow shifty. He wasn’t coming clean. I didn’t like it.

I was so pissed off that when I went and stubbed my cigarette out into the glass ashtray on the bedside table, I knocked it down. It shattered into a million pieces. I heard Radcliff finish his call. His phone rang again and I said, “Turn it off.”

“Excuse me?”

“We need to talk.”

“Right.” He walked toward me.

“Look, I’m going to call. You understand?” I held up my own phone.

“Don’t.”

“Hey, fuck off, man.”

“Please.” He looked for a place to put out his own smoke and saw the broken ashtray. He stubbed the cigarette out against his boot and put the butt in his pocket. “Please. For Lily’s sake. Please, Artie, just listen to me.”

He was worried about Lily’s connection with the woman’s death. I saw that now. Did he think she had been involved?

“Then level with me.”

“Sure, Artie. Of course,” said Radcliff. “If it becomes a case, it will go to my station house, and my ex-partner, who’s the senior homicide guy, is an old-fashioned by-the-book kind of cop. He doesn’t let up. The pressure will be on Lily and I don’t think she could handle it right now.”

“But you don’t feel right about the woman’s death, either, do you?”

“I don’t know, since you’re asking. I took a pretty good look around the apartment, and everything looks OK. It looks fine. But I don’t know.”

“What about her fingertip?”

“The ring finger?”

“Yeah.”

“I asked Lily; she didn’t seem to know.”

“At least I want Simonova’s own doctor to sign off, so we have that,” I said.

“Fine.”

“What else?”

“You know that feeling you get on a case there’s something you can’t grab hold of, some piece of evidence you didn’t see even if you were looking?” said Radcliff. “To me, first glance, it felt like the woman was sick, she died. Natural causes. The oxygen was on; there were no signs I could see of anything else. Except for one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“She looks posed,” said Radcliff. “You look at her, hands crossed, all tidied up, lying there like something in a church. Like somebody found her looking fucked up and put her right. It’s too neat.” He looked at me. “You thought that, too, didn’t you, Artie?”

“Maybe. You told Lily?”

“I tried, but she started crying. I don’t know. I don’t understand, and I’ve known her most of a year…You ever see her like this?”

The way he acted, doing the right thing for Lily, even saying she needed me, made him seem like a guy who knew his relationship was so solid he could ask her ex-boyfriend for help.

He turned his phone back on, looked at the screen.

“I have to go,” he said. “I’ll get back as soon as I can. So we’re on the same page, right, Artie?”

I looked at the door. “Where the hell is Lily?”